Looking to make your Callin episodes even better? Here are some tips & tricks for Callin creators to produce the best possible content and grow their audiences.
Callin creators are raising the bar for interesting, engaging content. If you’ve spent any time in the app, you know that there are some high-quality shows that have gained a lot of listeners and subscribers. But our goal is to make podcasting as easy as possible for anyone. As we like to put it — all it takes is your phone and something interesting to say.
With Callin, you don’t need to be a professional podcaster or have expensive equipment and editing software to create amazing content. Here are a few tips and tricks to level up your production value so you can be really proud of the episodes you create.
Mic drop 🖐 🎤
The mics built into smartphones are high enough quality to get a solid recording, but some creators have asked for recommendations on external mics that integrate seamlessly and won’t break the bank. Here are our picks:
- A mic headset that works well with Callin — Option 1
- A mic headset that works well with Callin — Option 2
- A high-quality audio adapter to attach the headset to your iPhone
Whether you’re using a built-in or external mic, make sure your mic isn’t too close or too far from your mouth. We want to hear what you have to say! Do a few test runs in a private room to find the optimal distance based on your equipment.
Reduce background noise as much as possible — whether you close a window for street noise, give your dog a bone to distract them, or silence notifications on your phone and computer.
The Caller Queue ⏭️ ☎️
One of the best ways to create engaging live content is to interact with your audience by going through the caller queue. It takes a little practice, but here’s the how-to:
- When you see a listener in the caller queue, select the blue “Take next caller” button. Then, the caller can unmute themselves and interact with you.
- If you want to continue to talk to them while also picking up the next caller, invite them to the speaker stage by selecting their profile picture and then selecting “Invite to speak”.
- You can always remove them from the speaker stage or caller queue and send them back to the listener group.
- Watch this tutorial to see the caller queue in action.
Remember, it’s your show and you decide the format — if you only want to take callers at the end of the show, you can set the expectation that you will not be accepting audience participation by turning off the caller queue. When you are ready to take comments and questions from listeners, turn it back on so they can call in.
Warm Up & Trim Down 🗣️ ✂️
Whether it takes a few minutes to get into the groove, or you have a guest on your show who is new to Callin, we make it easy to seamlessly record. Here are two tips:
- Try starting the room as private while you get yourself and your guest set up, and then make the room public when you are ready to start.
- To remove silence at the beginning and end of your episode, enable Auto Trim in the post-production editing flow.
- Auto-Trim only removes dead time; if there’s casual conversation that you want to remove from your episode, that can be de-selected through the Clip Transcript editing feature and listeners will jump right into your content.
- If you publish your episode then realize you forgot to make an edit, you can revert the published episode to a draft, finish editing, and re-publish it.
Plan Ahead & Share After 💬 📲
Looking for ways to grow your audience? It takes time and engagement, but scheduling ahead and creating highlights after are two must-dos. Oh, and make sure your show art includes your show title — while artsy graphics are great, including your show name is important for recognition!
Scheduling upcoming rooms to maximize audience attendance and engagement:
- Schedule ahead and promote upcoming rooms so your subscribers know when you’ll be live.
- Share scheduled and live rooms on your social platforms with enough notice so your followers will join the live room.
- If you have guests joining you, make sure to tag them and ask them to promote the upcoming room too. Learn how here.
Use highlights to boost distribution after the episode is published:
- Highlights are a great way to share soundbites and takeaways from your episodes. Encourage your listeners to create highlights — they become a crowdsourced highlight reel of your audience’s favorite content from your show. They also help you know what resonates for future episode planning. Watch our tutorial on creating highlights here.
- You can also create your own highlights so it’s even easier for your listeners to share. Plus, making highlights from your original episodes exponentially increases your content archive.
- Share your episodes and highlights to your other social media platforms so that your entire community can enjoy your content. Here’s a video on how to share a highlight.
We constantly strive to make Callin the best possible platform for creators and listeners, and we have some exciting product updates in store that are oriented towards that goal.
If you have any feature requests, feedback, questions, or other best practices not included above, please shoot us a note at support@callin.com and we’ll be happy to help. Check out our Creator Crash Course if you’re brand new to Callin.
Follow us on social for content recommendations, tips & more: Twitter: @getcallin, Instagram: @callinapp, and YouTube.
